Over the past two and a half years about 80 precast and prestressed concrete manufacturers have subscribed to the Idencia concrete tracking system to improve inventory control and implement paperless QC processes. As they have integrated Idencia into their operations, they have developed some great ideas for improvements based on their user experiences. We welcome this input because our customers often come up with suggestions that may never have occurred to us. Every once in a while we like to report the new features that have been developed from these ideas.
Most of the ideas come from customers who see that 1 +1 = 3.
Rather than seeing concrete tracking as a discrete system... just an add-on... they want to leverage the information technology behind it to integrate with... and improve... existing systems and workflows.
Here are 3 examples that have been suggested to us and have become new features:
1. Provide 'decision tree' direction to the user.
As users on the production floor record information on a tablet, Idencia will direct the user to the second question based on the answer to the first. So, for instance, if a piece is identified as needing repair, the user is directed to questions about what needs to be done and will not be allowed to accept the piece until the repair is recorded. This came to us from a customer that wants to use Idencia to help standardized production practices in addition to collecting information.
2. Write your own serial number into the RFID tag.
We have many customers that use the identifiers created in their scheduling system as the serial numbers used in Idencia. For a long time the only way to do this was for the customer to print bar code labels instead of using pre-printed RFID tags. However, our customers also wanted the permanence of RFID tags for reliable concrete tracking. The result? We can now set up customers with inexpensive equipment that will enable them to over-write their own serial numbers into the tags.
3. Use any combination of letters and numbers for your tags.
RFID tags typically are written in the hexadecimal format which is limited to the letters A-F and is otherwise very structured. This impeded seamless integration with the custom nomenclature used by each customer. We were asked by a new customer to address this and so we added an ASCI format option in Idencia. Customers can use any combination of letters and numbers for their serial numbers and Idencia will translate this back into hexadecimal format for use with RFID tags.
The best ideas come from users and we really enjoy watching Idencia evolve this way. Please keep those ideas coming!
About Idencia
Our purpose at Idencia is to offer precast RFID tracking solutions that improve productivity throughout the value chain. Our subscription offering applies to products from the time of manufacture through end-of-life. As a cloud-hosted product tracking system that is seamless between manufacturers, contractors and asset managers, Idencia adds information value to all, eliminates redundancy and saves time. If you would like to learn more, click below.
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